Valve wants the Steam Deck to be the starting point for an entirely new handheld PC ecosystem, and in an interview with IGN, Gabe Newell said that the relatively low price point of the Deck is "painful" but "important," and that he hopes it will also be a long-term He said he hopes it will be a starting point for establishing a product category that will benefit Valve.

In other words, he hopes other PC makers will jump on the Deck train and release their own versions of handheld PCs.

"Our thinking is that if we do this right, we'll be selling these by the millions," Newell says. And obviously it establishes a product category that we and other PC makers can participate in. And that will have long-term benefits for us. That's kind of the frame of mind we're in on this."

This "long-term benefit" may explain one of the biggest surprises about the Steam Deck: the price. While other handheld gaming PCs cost over $1,000, the entry point for the 64GB Deck is only $399. Of course, if you're serious about playing on the go, you'll want the 256GB or 512GB versions with NVMe, at $529 and $649 respectively, but the price is still remarkable.

However, if Valve is looking to establish this product category and have other manufacturers build on it, it would be desirable to have a popular and affordable initial device.

And I can definitely see that happening; Valve may have a hard time keeping up with demand. After all, we are in the midst of a chip supply crisis, and there are many AMD APUs that Microsoft and Sony want TSMC to make for their consoles.

This could be all the proof that companies like MSI and Asus need to start making their own decks; Asus is already focusing all its efforts on gaming phones, so this doesn't feel like such a big step for the company. However, both companies will likely see the limitations of the Steam Deck and seek more, and with MSI and ROG Decks selling for $1,000+ like current handheld PCs, the number of potential buyers is likely to dwindle quickly.

We have already seen that Dell and Alienware have their own ideas about handheld gaming with the UFO prototype, so we can see it getting a paint job, SteamOS installed, and pushed out the door again at premium prices.

It is debatable whether other PC makers will have the same "painful" pricing that Valve stuck with for Deck. I think it's unlikely, and I have a feeling that enthusiasm for the handheld PC ecosystem will quickly wane.

But that's based on what happened with the original Steam Machines that Valve tried to launch a few years ago. It was itself a SteamOS-based pseudo-PC console, made for the living room at the time, but another product category that Valve was trying to push out to other PC makers.

This time, however, things may be different, and Valve is certainly trying to prove the value of the Deck on its own first, before involving other system builders; we hope the Deck will be more of an Index than a Steam Machine, and we hope the Steam Machine will be more of an Index than a Steam Machine.